McKeesport, PA. – The Penn State Greater Allegheny Baseball Team (10-12, 7-3) has been on fire lately winning five of their last six games to find themselves right in the thick of the Penn State University Athletic Conference Playoff race. They will look to try and solidify a spot when they take on PSU-DuBois (20-7, 10-1) on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Showers Field in DuBois, PA.
PSUGA is coming off of a big weekend where they won two of three against Penn State Beaver and finished a sweep of their season series with PSU-Fayette. After a 4-2 loss to PSU-Beaver to start the weekend, they came back with a bang on their way to 10-7 and 16-6 wins over Beaver before defeating Fayette 16-1 on Sunday. After entering the weekend in fourth place in the PSUAC West Division, PSUGA now finds themselves in second place with a game and a half lead over third place PSU-Mont Alto.
It was a big offensive weekend for Josh Arroyo (Toa Alta, Puerto Rico/Levittown Baptist Academy) who hit .467 (7-15) with eight RBI over his last five ball games. His biggest performance came against PSU-Beaver on Saturday when he combined to go 4-5 with 4 RBI in the two wins. Arroyo reached a career milestone on Sunday when he collected his 100th career collegiate RBI when he was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the fourth inning with the bases loaded.
Sunday saw their best pitching performance when Marcos Lopez (Caglas, Puerto Rico/Ramey) dazzled over five innings of work picking up a complete game victory over PSU-Fayette. Lopez had a no hitter going through the first 3.1 innings of work before giving up his first hit in the top of the fifth. Lopez earned his first collegiate win in the victory while walking three and striking out six batters over his five innings of work.
PSUGA currently sits at 7-3 in PSUAC play and has a chance to secure themselves a playoff spot with a win on Wednesday. PSUGA is still looking to play for a higher seed as the top three teams from the West will make the PSUAC tournament with the #1 seed receiving a bye and the #3 seed traveling to take on the #2 seed in the first round of the tournament.
One of the teams vying for that number one spot is PSU-DuBois who enters play on Wednesday sitting at 10-1 in PSUAC play. They have won their last four games in a row and eight of their last 10 ball games including a three-game sweep of PSU-Mont Alto over the weekend. They started the weekend off with a bang winning 16-3 before coming back with 6-4 and 7-6 wins on Saturday to complete the weekend.
PSUGA and PSU-DuBois split a doubleheader earlier this season on March 30th where DuBois won game one 6-3 in eight innings and PSUGA recorded a comeback win in game two picking up a 5-4 victory. That win was the only win for PSUGA against PSU-DuBois since the 2010 season.
First pitch for Wednesday’s contest is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Showers Field in DuBois, PA. The game will be live streamed and you can follow along with all the action by visiting our Facebook and Twitter pages throughout the night.
